Women's basketball: CU Buffs' Linda Lappe signs four to 2013 class

Coach feels every player is big part of future

Heading into her third season as the Colorado women's basketball coach, Linda Lappe has steadily built a winning team.

The Buffs' head coach is hoping she added four more winners on Wednesday.

Lappe announced that the Buffs have signed four players to the Class of 2013: Zoe Beard-Fails, Desiree Harris, Haley Smith and Briana Watts. All four had made verbal commitments weeks ago, but could not sign their letters of intent until Wednesday.

"I feel like each one of our signees has only begun to be as good of a player as they're going to be in the future," Lappe said. "They're all extremely coachable, they're all great people and they all are competitive in everything they do."

Beard-Fails is a 6-foot-2 forward from Herndon, Va. She averaged 27 points and 18 rebounds at Georgetown Day School as a sophomore, but missed all but games of her junior year after tearing an ACL. She expects to be at full strength for the upcoming season.

Harris, a 5-8 combo guard from Oakland, Calif., posted 23.5 points, 7.0 rebounds, 2.9 steals and 2.7 assists per game last year at St. Joseph Notre Dame.

Smith is a 6-foot wing from Skyline High School in Sammamish, Wash. Her numbers (about seven points and five rebounds per game) don't jump off the table, but she is believed to have almost unlimited potential and exceptional athletic ability. She has also been surrounded by good talent and should be ready to explode as she takes a leadership role for her team this year.

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Watts is another player with untapped potential. A 6-4 center from Clovis West High School in Fresno, Calif. (she played her first three years at Buchanan High), Watts was the first player to make a commitment to the Buffs. She averaged about six points and six rebounds per game on a perimeter-oriented team.

"We felt like we needed to sign one at about every position and we pretty much got that," Lappe said. "We felt like we added a lot of physical play in this class, we feel like we added some great defenders and I think their skill set is only going to continue to get better."

Colorado currently has 13 players under scholarship, two below the NCAA maximum of 15. The Buffs will lose three of those players to graduation after this season (Chucky Jeffery, Brenna Malcolm-Peck and Meagan Malcolm-Peck). With the addition of this class, the Buffs should go into the 2013-14 season with 14 scholarship players -- the most Lappe has had during her tenure at CU.

"The best teams I've ever seen or been a part of either as a player or coach, you had a lot of depth and you had a lot of good players and the players really pushed each other to get better every day in practice," Lappe said. "When you got to the games it was really easy because you'd seen better in practice all week long. That's really what we're going for and going for a lot of different types of players."

Notable

When the Buffs begin the 2013-14 season, the roster will be nearly full of Lappe's signees. Twins Ashley and Brittany Wilson, who will be seniors next year, are slated to be the only two players left that were recruited by former coach Kathy McConnell-Miller. The Wilsons never played for McConnell-Miller, however. ... In Lappe's first year, 2010-11, the Buffs had just 10 players on the roster. ... Lappe has now signed 12 players since becoming head coach, just one of those (current freshman Lauren Huggins) from Colorado.

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